Let me first start by saying I am a new grad and know I have plenty to learn. I have NOT started my first position as a graduate nurse, I will begin that in August. I am currently working as a nursing assistant at a small facility where I have been for almost 2 years, I have been a nursing assistant in total for about 4 years and also worked in telemetry. My new job is at a different facility.
I work with at the most 3 other nurses on my shift. On a rare occasion we have pediatric patients. They are all post-surgical patients. I have a question concerning routine blood pressures on pediatric patients, I was taught as a general rule of thumb there is no need for routine BP on a patient under the age 8. A seasoned nurse insisted that I am wrong (she enjoys being a bully and everyone is usually wrong about everything ). Unfortunately, we do not have a policy on this at my facility. What is the age you use as a cut off or is there even one at all?
Specializes in Neonatal nursing (paediatric trained).
When a student nurse (I had placements in NICU, A&E [ED], general paeds & community), we always took a BP on admission for a baseline and then more often if required do the meds, condition, etc. If they'd just come back from surgery/recovery, we'd do a full set of obs/vitals (including BP) every 15 minutes for the first hour, every half hour for the next two hours, hourly for the next four hours and finally back onto four hourly obs/vitals (all those timings are changed if need be, dependent on patient's condition/rate of recovery).
). Unfortunately, we do not have a policy on this at my facility. What is the age you use as a cut off or is there even one at all?
MandaAnda
142 Posts
When a student nurse (I had placements in NICU, A&E [ED], general paeds & community), we always took a BP on admission for a baseline and then more often if required do the meds, condition, etc. If they'd just come back from surgery/recovery, we'd do a full set of obs/vitals (including BP) every 15 minutes for the first hour, every half hour for the next two hours, hourly for the next four hours and finally back onto four hourly obs/vitals (all those timings are changed if need be, dependent on patient's condition/rate of recovery).